Second Amendment had ties to slavery

By Neil Nissenbaum

Published: Friday, February 1, 2013 at 04:14 PM.

James Madison’s first draft of the Second Amendment: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

Madison changed his first draft to make sure it was unambiguous that Southern states could maintain their slave patrol militias independent of the federal government. He changed the word “country” to “state,” the Second Amendment taking its final form: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

When Americans think of militias, they tend to think of minutemen at Lexington and Concord and “the shot heard around the world.”

Bogus concluded, “Some assume the Founders incorporated the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights because an armed citizenry had been important to security in colonial America and is essential to throwing off the yoke of British oppression. Much of this is myth.”

“It cannot be overemphasized that slavery was the central feature of life in slave-holding states, and that the South depended on arms and the militia itself against the constant danger of a slave revolt … Southerners had to be infinitely more concerned about slave control than abstract, ideological or contingent beliefs about liberty and guns.”

“The Second Amendment was not enacted to provide a check on government tyranny; rather, it was written to assure the Southern states that Congress would not undermine the slave system by using its newly acquired constitutional authority over the militia to disarm the state militia and thereby destroy the South’s principal instrument of slave control” — professor Carl T. Bogus, Roger Williams University Law School, in his extraordinary thesis, “The Hidden History of the Second Amendment.”

“Well-regulated militias” referred to state militias used to suppress slave rebellions. These slave patrols were armed white men who made regular rounds, making sure blacks weren’t wandering where they didn’t belong, gathering in groups or engaging in other suspicious activity.

“Equally important,” said Bogus, “was the demonstration of constant vigilance and armed force. The basic strategy was to ensure and impress upon the slaves that whites were armed, watchful and ready to respond to insurrectionist activity at all times. The state required white men and female plantation owners to participate in patrols and to provide their own arms and equipment.”

“In the South, therefore, the patrols and the militia were largely synonymous …The militia was the first and last protection from the omnipresent threat of slave insurrection of vengeance.”

Patrick Henry said, “They will search that paper (the Constitution), and see if they have the power of manumission (freeing the slaves). And have they not, sir? Have they not the power to provide for the general defense and welfare? May they not think that these call for the abolition of slavery? May they not pronounce all slaves free, and will they not be warranted by that power? This is no ambiguous implication or logical deduction. The paper speaks to the point: they have the power in clear, unequivocal terms, and will clearly and certainly exercise it.”

Virginians Patrick Henry and George Mason used fear of slave rebellion to oppose the proposed Constitution. Henry argued that Southerners’ “property” (slaves) would be lost under the new Constitution and the slave uprisings would not be peaceful or tranquil: “In this situation,” he told James Madison, “I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquility gone.”

James Madison’s first draft of the Second Amendment: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

Madison changed his first draft to make sure it was unambiguous that Southern states could maintain their slave patrol militias independent of the federal government. He changed the word “country” to “state,” the Second Amendment taking its final form: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

When Americans think of militias, they tend to think of minutemen at Lexington and Concord and “the shot heard around the world.”

Bogus concluded, “Some assume the Founders incorporated the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights because an armed citizenry had been important to security in colonial America and is essential to throwing off the yoke of British oppression. Much of this is myth.”

“It cannot be overemphasized that slavery was the central feature of life in slave-holding states, and that the South depended on arms and the militia itself against the constant danger of a slave revolt … Southerners had to be infinitely more concerned about slave control than abstract, ideological or contingent beliefs about liberty and guns.”